Google testing new wireless network, asks FCC to keep details secret

Experimental network at Mountain View given "confidential" status.

Google is building a wireless network at its headquarters in Mountain View, California, using spectrum owned by Clearwire that's suitable for LTE cellular deployments. The project is described in an application to the Federal Communications Commission, but many of the details are secret. In a letter accompanying the application, Google "respectfully requests confidential treatment."

"Google has not made the information subject to this request available to the public or to any third parties, does not routinely disclose such commercially sensitive information to the public or to third parties, and has established procedures to protect such information internally," the company wrote.

So what's going on? What details we know are in Google's application for an experimental license and a two-paragraph description accompanying it. "Google plans to test up to 50 base stations and 200 user devices," wireless engineer Steven Crowley wrote yesterday in a blog post summarizing the application. "Base stations will be indoors and outdoors, with the range of each 100-200 meters, and 500-1000 meters, respectively. Both directional and non-directional antennas will be used. The experiment is to take place within a two-mile radius, so this is a quite dense network, which could have very high capacity for carrying data."

Google requests use of frequencies 2524-2546 and 2567-2625 MHz, which are used by Clearwire for mobile broadband. “The only reason to use these frequencies is if you have business designs on some mobile service,” Crowley told the Wall Street Journal. Google has not revealed the output power of the devices used in the test, though, deeming the information "not applicable" in the application form. That "doesn’t make sense," Crowley wrote. "The power is a fundamental quantity that should be disclosed so others may independently assess the potential for interference from the experiment to their services. FCC staff should ask Google to supply this information."

The types of base stations and end-user devices used in the tests are also confidential.

Google's previous requests for experimental licenses have used unlicensed frequencies such as those in the 2.4 and 5 GHz bands used by Wi-Fi. "This appears to be Google’s first experimental radio application using mobile broadband bands," Crowley wrote.

i have to believe google's statement choice "not applicable" to read minimal for the test. i also feel sure they will be using various devices to test for interference to avoid any problems. it was a nice try but i doubt the FCC is going to press for it.slayerwulfe cave

Instead of running fiber to everyone's house, they just run it to neighborhood nodes, and then you put an antenna on the side of your house or inside your house.

I would move to a town setup like that if the latency on the connection is still good enough for multiple computers doing online gaming at the same time, we're a family of 5 and have had 4 online games going at once before, gotta be able to handle that without batting an eyelash

“The only reason to use these frequencies is if you have business designs on some mobile service,”

Disagree. As a pure research project "what could we do with an order of magnitude more cellular data capabilities" is plausible even if they don't have any plans to build out such a network themselves.

“The only reason to use these frequencies is if you have business designs on some mobile service,”

Disagree. As a pure research project "what could we do with an order of magnitude more cellular data capabilities" is plausible even if they don't have any plans to build out such a network themselves.

I think he was referring to the fact that the spectrum is owned by Clearwire, thus Google needs some sort of agreement with Clearwire to use it.

I'm sure Clearwire is fine having Google potentially as a partner in LTE deployments. I'm sure they could use the cash.

Clearwire has a market cap of 4.7B. How much cash does Google have on hand?

Google doesn't need to strike a deal with Clearwire if Clearwire is being purchased by Dish. Google needs to strike a deal with Dish, which it seems they are in the process of.

People keep saying one of the big problems with Android is how it is fragmented and forked, or how carriers hold up the software updates. If Google becomes the carrier, then they can offer a much better experience.

Google wants you to use the internet as much as possible, so I don't see them offering data caps like everyone else. In fact, I see Google offering industry-changing cheap unlimited data plans like how they have shaken up every other industry they've gone into.

Does Dish have the rights to transmit most of their content via IP? Seems like something they could get negotiated that Google never could. Content owners are too scared of Google while Dish is a known entity.

Would be nice to see a fresh attempt at content delivery instead of just another triple play option.

Google doesn't need to strike a deal with Clearwire if Clearwire is being purchased by Dish. Google needs to strike a deal with Dish, which it seems they are in the process of.

I haven't seen any mention of the Dish offer since its initial announcement; but at the time there was a lot of belief that they made it primarily to spite Sprint by forcing them to make a higher bid for the company, not because they were seriously interested in an acquisition.

I would probably switch to hosting by google if it was available and reasonable* in my area.I have ATT DSL and I hate it with a passion, sadly my other choice is Time Warner's Road Runner and they want more than double what I am paying for ATT. Now RR speed is 10mbs and ATT;s is 6 (not that I ever get more than 5, but they have that covered in the TOS) but that is not worth double the cost.

*reasonable: comparable service that works as promised for about the same price to about 20% more.

Google doesn't need to strike a deal with Clearwire if Clearwire is being purchased by Dish. Google needs to strike a deal with Dish, which it seems they are in the process of.

I haven't seen any mention of the Dish offer since its initial announcement; but at the time there was a lot of belief that they made it primarily to spite Sprint by forcing them to make a higher bid for the company, not because they were seriously interested in an acquisition.

Has anything came out since to clarify things?

When Google started negotiating with Dish, I took it as a sign that Dish was quite serious about buying Clearwire.

Dan, to me it seemed like Dish wanted to just get 40MHz of prime BRS 2.6GHz spectrum from Clearwire, and then who cares about what happens to the rest of the holdings. I think they wanted that 40MHz to supplement their 35MHz of usable 2.2GHz spectrum, and then they would probably participate in the 600MHz incentive auction if they actually wanted to build a cellular network to round out their spectrum holdings. But who knows if Dish actually wants to build a cellular network, or just get AT&T worried enough to get AT&T to up their price for the 2.2GHz+700MHz spectrum Dish already owns.

50 base stations in a two-mile radius suggests we're not talking about a mesh network. The idea of a mesh network would be to minimize cell density by increasing reliance on peer-to-peer routing. This experiment seems to be exploring the opposite end of the spectrum (no pun intended), where the strategy is to maximize cell density. If the goal is to minimize power consumption by the battery-powered client radios, for example, then a dense hub-and-spoke network is preferable to a sparse mesh network.

Google is starting to realize from its Chelsea NYC experiment how dirt cheap an 1 GigE fiber to the block network actually is per sub - 5 bucks a month max. Using Clearwire spectum with its own mass produced devices they could put Big Telecom out of business in a few short years.

I'd love for it to be any of the above (Residential high speed wireless, new wireless carrier, etc). It very likely may also be a better way to test Android phones for compatibility. Apple has their massive Anechoic chambers to simulate all types of conditions, test out new hardware in, etc. Google might just be looking to do that, but without the chamber and with actual real-world conditions.

You know, test the Nexus against various LTE and other hardware, get the stats from the backend cell network, play with timings, timeouts and the thousand variables that you can tweak in a cell network. Having access to all of that could help them with battery life, compatibility, robustness, etc.

As others already said 50 base stations in a 2 mile radius is extremely dense (less than one base station for that area would be notably not dense). This looks more like extended WiFi than anything else. Might be a bit mesh-like if you have the base stations at homes or offices, utilizing high-bandwidth internet access there and sharing a bit of the bandwidth with mobile clients. Well, not really a mesh, but rather a distributed multi-sourced roaming arrangement. Which surely has its own challenges.

"The power is a fundamental quantity that should be disclosed so others may independently assess the potential for interference from the experiment to their services. FCC staff should ask Google to supply this information."

There was a part that mentioned Google asked the FCC to not publically release certain information - maybe this was included and the FCC deemed it okay. ANd since it's not public - we won't find out.

Now Sprint owns more than half of Clearwire, and has made an offer to buy all of it. So far it looks like Clearwire may go with Sprint's offer over Dish's.

Softbank, an innovative company in Japan, is seeking to buy Sprint. They want Sprint to own Clearwire, because Clearwire owns frequency that coincides with what Softbank owns in Japan, so they could make phones that work in both countries (Clearwire also uses the same TD-LTE technology).

This might just be an experiment by Google using a wholesale wireless lease of bandwidth offered by Clearwire, and nothing more.

But it would certainly be interesting if Google was actually thinking about getting involved with Clearwire (and Softbank/Sprint) in some bigger deal that would give them access to a nationwide Advanced LTE network, allowing 1G wireless connections!